Why We Cry - Page 2

We’ve already discussed examples of situations in which tears emerge because a problem has been solved and the system can “go off duty”; however, adults and children sometimes cry in connection with problems that haven’t yet been solved, and perhaps never will be. In these instances, tears indicate that the person is at least temporarily giving up the struggle. Although this is commonly thought of as a “breakdown,” we optimistically consider it a potential breakthrough. By backing away from an overwhelming issue, the system can husband its resources and regroup for a fresh assault. This is a bit like putting a frustrating puzzle aside for the night and tackling it again in the morning, after a good night’s sleep. Because we typically cry when we feel safe, the person’s tears can suggest a willingness to enlist the help of others—perhaps the therapist, a spouse, or another trusted ally.

Years ago, a client was involved in an auto accident. As soon as she realized she hadn’t been seriously injured, she got out of her car, coolly assessed the situation, and proceeded to assist the other passengers. Shortly after the ambulance arrived, she sat down on a nearby curb and began to weep. Onlookers feared that she was experiencing some sort of delayed traumatic reaction, but they needn’t have worried. The arrival of the ambulance workers simply permitted her to move to the sidelines and relax enough to have “a good cry.” By the way, the pleasure of a good cry has virtually nothing to do with the number of tears shed. It’s the parasympathetic changes associated with the recovery phase that both feel good and are restorative for the system.

Although phase-two recuperation is almost always healthy for the system, many clinicians overreact to an adult’s tears. Our evolutionary programming, geared to raising infants, prompts us to launch into emergency action when anyone cries. We feel obliged to help, but with adults, we may not be sure what to do.

When a friend’s wife was having surgery, he spent hours pacing back and forth in the hospital waiting room. The surgeon finally appeared at the doorway and beckoned him to step outside. As he walked toward the surgeon, his anticipation level reached astronomical heights. When the surgeon announced that the operation had gone extremely well, the husband slumped to the floor and began to sob. Through his tears, he noticed a look of panic on the surgeon’s face. As he later explained, “The poor guy didn’t know what to do with me. He was speechless. I wound up having to pat him on the back and assure him that I was fine.” Evidently, the surgeon wasn’t used to seeing a grown man dissolve into tears, especially in response to good news, yet the husband’s sobs were an outward indication that his system was going off duty and efficiently replenishing its resources following the prolonged period of stress.

Like the surgeon in our story, clinicians too can feel an urge to rush in and “fix things” that aren’t broken. This often makes matters worse. Therefore, in accordance with our theoretical model and clinical experience, we offer some suggested dos and don’ts for dealing with adult clients who are crying.

The first rule is to avoid “crowding” the client with an anxious flurry of pats and hugs. If you’ve cried recently yourself, you may remember how uncomfortable it is to be fussed over at a time when you’re trying to remain connected to your experience. Tearful individuals need a relaxed, safe space in which to process their thoughts and feelings—frantic attention isn’t helpful. This is exactly the wrong time to pepper them with questions about why they’re crying or anxious inquiries about “what’s wrong?” There’ll be plenty of time for debriefing later.

Because the urge to “do something” is strong, we have to remind ourselves to relax in the presence of adult tears and allow the natural recovery phase to run its course. When a person is crying, there should be no hurry to move on in a session. Over the years, our therapeutic mantra has been “If tears are flowing, something worthwhile is happening.” Either there’s been a meaningful breakthrough, or—as we indicated earlier—the person is giving up an approach that wasn’t working.

A good rule of thumb is that as long as tears are flowing freely, you don’t have to do anything. OK, if you happen to be seated close enough (and the relationship permits), you might lightly touch the tearful person’s arm just to let him or her know that you’re fully present. Similarly, you might offer a tissue or gesture toward the tissue box. Anything more can be intrusive and counterproductive.

Certainly avoid the temptation—generated by your own anxiety—to delegitimize the person’s tears (“There’s no need to cry about it!”) or to issue false reassurances (“Everything will be fine!”). Even professionals, who ought to know better, sometimes feel an urge to stop the person from crying, as if stopping the tears would eliminate the problem. This is a bit like trying to fix a car by disconnecting the “check engine” light.

Because we want our clients to stay in touch with their experience, we gently wave off their attempts to explain, justify, or apologize for their tears (e.g., “I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to do this”). At this point, verbal interchange is the enemy—the less said the better. When a client is in the midst of a crying episode, it’s best to avoid fancy interpretations, even if you’re sure they’re right on target.

When the tearful episode winds down, we typically ask, “What’s the thought that helped you cry?” That question tends to elicit more tears (and additional stress reduction). Notice that we say “what helped you cry” rather than “what made you cry.” We learned to use that subtle positive connotation from Harvey Jackins, the originator of Re-evaluation Counseling and an expert on the mechanisms of emotional expression. Jackins taught that, paradoxically, the best way to elicit a person’s feelings is to ask about his or her thoughts. Instead of asking “How do you feel?” ask “What are you thinking?” The “feelings” question too often produces vague generalities (“I’m feeling sad”) or unhelpful descriptions of body sensations (“There is a dull ache in my midsection”). By contrast, asking about the person’s thoughts gets us closer to the images and recollections that ease the shift from upset to recovery. For instance, in response to being asked about his thoughts, a grieving son replied, “I keep remembering me and my father being in a rowboat together. He kept apologizing because we hadn’t caught any fish. I wanted to explain that it didn’t matter, but I couldn’t get the words out [more tears]. How come I could never tell him how much I loved him?”

Note that as participant--observers we typically overestimate how long clients have been crying. A few minutes of tears may seem like an eternity, prompting the therapist to wonder whether clients will ever stop. They always do. Keep in mind that crying is a natural, adaptive process, and the best policy is to let it run its course. Some people seem to have an inexhaustible supply of tears, partly because of their system lability. They may castigate themselves for “breaking down” whenever they tear up. This generates a cycle of rising and falling tension, resulting in bouts of sobbing punctuated by flurries of self-criticism.

Defining Emotion

Explicit definitions of emotion are a rarity in the mental health literature. We’ve read entire books about the role of emotion in therapy in which the term is never defined. Yet the lack of definitional specificity hampers the development of theory and technique, so we’ll attempt to fill this gap by suggesting that term emotion be reserved for the body postures and hormonal settings that form the necessary support system for our actions. Fighting, for instance, is a high-emotion state, requiring elevated adrenaline levels and a tense musculature; sleeping, a low-emotion state, requires just the opposite. In similar fashion, one can calculate the optimal biophysical and related emotional profile for any particular class of actions.

In our ordinary language, we talk as if we have emotions only once in a while, such as when we’re experiencing great passion, overwhelming hopelessness, abject terror, or all-consuming anger; however, in our lexicon, all our tasks have an emotional underpinning, including when we cook dinner, read a novel, or take out the trash. Even calm, deliberate, problem-solving requires a rather specific set of bodily calibrations: if you’re too aroused, you can’t think straight; if you’re too relaxed, you’re apt to lose track of the problem. Thus, as biologist Humberto Maturana notes, “understanding” should be considered a legitimate and important emotional state. He uses the term “emotional contradiction” to describe the temporary mismatches between our biochemistry and our circumstances. For example, we arrive home after an argument with a coworker. Our spouse is waiting at the door, expecting a tender kiss. However, because we’re still fuming over what happened at the office, we can’t switch gears fast enough to be affectionate. Fighting and affiliating require different body postures and hormonal settings, and the biochemistry needs a bit of time to catch up. So, for the moment, the best we can do is offer our spouse a perfunctory peck, perhaps accompanied by a mumbled explanation about why we aren’t “in the mood.”

Technically speaking, tears, laughter, tantrums, and trembling aren’t emotions: they’re outward signs of abrupt shifts in neurophysiology. We’ve already explained that tears are triggered by the change from sympathetic to parasympathetic functioning. Without going into detail, we can add that laughter is the expected response to the resolution of ambiguity, tantrums are a vigorous form of protest, and shivers signal the dissipation of fear.

If emotions are merely biophysical settings, and tears, laughter, tantrums, and trembling are just indications of biochemical shifts, why do so many clinicians continue to believe that pounding pillows and other cathartic rituals have curative powers? An ingenious social psychology experiment conducted years ago, designed to test catharsis theory, sheds light on this question. Participants were first insulted. Then they were given an opportunity to get even with the perpetrator directly or listen passively while someone else defended their reputation. As it turned out, it didn’t matter how much personal energy individuals consumed redressing the grievance they’d suffered: as long as they felt that the score had been settled, their mood returned to normal. What was important was the restoration of their self-esteem, not the amount of energy they expended defending themselves. This suggests that such rituals as pounding pillows are useful only to the extent that they result in positive self-esteem changes. If the social context is right, people can feel more powerful and effective as they pretend to get even with their boss (as represented by the pillow).

Alexis had been abruptly fired from a job she’d held for 20 years. To add insult to injury, a security guard was assigned to watch her pack her things and escort her off the premises. She wasn’t even given a chance to say good-bye to the other members of her department. Later, she heard through the grapevine that her departure was being blamed on her unwillingness to adapt to change.

She felt furious each time she relived that day. Her reputation had been unfairly tarnished, and she’d been denied her day in court. There was no place for her to tell her side of the story or seek compensation for the injustices she felt she’d endured. From our perspective, she hadn’t “stored” her anger for later “release.” Anger is recreated when the person recalls what happened. Such recollections can generate postures and hormonal settings similar to the original incident, although not always at the same level.

Joining a therapy group proved a useful place for Alexis to gain closure about her situation. The group members were quite supportive and chimed in with their own tales of corporate malfeasance. She learned from the others that hustling fired employees out of the building under a guard’s scrutiny is standard practice in some industries. Thus, the way she was treated wasn’t necessarily a personal slur on her character. She discovered that she wasn’t alone in experiencing doubts about her self-worth after having been fired, even though she’d had a successful career up until that point. Through the group process, she regained her self-confidence and got back into the job market. In this case, pounding pillows and shouting epithets at an imaginary supervisor wasn’t necessary: it was sufficient that she received enough social validation to heal her bruised ego.

Because the social setting is crucial to the outcome, it can be a mistake to follow the advice of steam-kettle advocates about the value of expressing all feelings. One of the authors served as a faculty advisor for an experimental dormitory problem-solving group. In the middle of the first meeting, one of the students felt compelled to “get off his chest” that he had sexual feelings for his male roommate. This disclosure created a nightmare for the residence staff: the straight roommate insisted on an immediate dorm transfer, and the devastated gay student threatened suicide and was briefly hospitalized by the student health service. That was the end of the dormitory group program. Again, the benefits and hazards of expressing feelings depends almost entirely on the characteristics of the social setting.

6 comments

I'm sorry, but I must go on. The idea that emotion stems from cognition is the basis for cognitive therapy, first developed by Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, no?

And the concept of positive connotation comes from the work of Milton Erickson. It was articulated by Palazzoli and her Milan colleagues in their book Paradox and Counter-Paradox.

Harvey Jackins on the other hand, was thought by many to be a quack, a paranoid and a cult leader. He is never cited in reputable literature that I know of. It puzzles me that you would credit him for positive connotation and the cognitive theory of emotion.

I am wondering about tears of frustration? they seem on the face of it to be more related to sympathetic nervous system processes. What is the understanding of this kind of crying and tears. There are many women who cry when they are angry as well. Are these exceptions to the two stage theory of tears?

Wonderful article! I wish you'd say more about your definition of emotion as "the body postures and hormonal settings that form the necessary support system for our actions," or give a list of examples or descriptions of them. I don't understand what you mean very well. Or have you published about that elsewhere?

I needed to hear this. I am in the process of ending a marriage of almost 37 years. Through the years there were many things that brought the marriage to the brink, but my husband's anger outbursts took it over the edge. Listening to your show I realized that he never cried...even when his mother died, a woman he loved and was close to, I only saw him cry for about a minute. When my mother died, I cried buckets for months, but if I dared to cry in front of him, he would shout at me "Shut up! Stop crying!" (I was in my twenties when I lost her, he lost his mother in 2004.)